Visit Sydney Olympic Park and you may notice signs about the use of technology in the public realm, and QR codes you can use to access more information.
This is the first use in Australia of Digital Trust for Places & Routines (DTPR), an open-source communication standard to increase the transparency, legibility and accountability of digital technology in the built environment.
“It uses iconography to communicate to people in public places what technology is being used and for what purposes,” explains Adam Beck, Head of Digital Urbanism at ENE.HUB, a digital infrastructure company.
The Olympic Park project is being supported by Transport for NSW, which has developed a Smart Places Customer Charter that “captures customer expectations of smart places in six principles which have been shaped by direct community input.”
Despite the use of technologies in our public places and spaces, Beck said transparency around their deployment is almost non-existent.
“The best we seem to have is the sign in the park that says, ‘CCTV in use.’ That's about it. You see it on buses, you see it in the shopping centres. Transparently disclosing what technology is being used, what data is being collected and for what purpose is virtually zero,” Beck said.
He said initiatives of the kind seen at Sydney Olympic Park are rare and the challenges to creating them significant.
“I've spoken to many local councils about this issue and many of them say the same thing: ‘We should be transparent and share this information, but there's no way in the world that we would do that. It will cause community outcry. They don't know those things exist. We don't want to draw attention to them,’” he said.
Beck will chair a panel discussion about digital trust with Susan Skuodas, Director, Place Management, Sydney Olympic Park Authority, and Emily Rucker, Director Smart Places Policy and Engagement, Transport for NSW, at the IoT Impact 2023 conference in Sydney on May 23. They will discuss the pilot digital transparency program at Sydney Olympic Park.
The conference, produced by IoT Alliance Australia, Australia’s peak industry body for Internet of Things (IoT), and IoT Hub, will feature three streams: green data, productivity and business outcomes, and trusted technology.
Leadership needed
The May 23 panel discussion will take place to build on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) concerns about growing distrust in digital technologies, just as reliance on digital networks and technologies is accelerating.
The WEF defines digital trust as “the expectation by individuals that digital technologies and services – and the organisations providing them – will protect all stakeholders’ interests and uphold societal expectations and values.”
The WEF launched a Digital Trust initiative which seeks to establish global consensus among key stakeholders on what digital trust means and how the trustworthiness of digital technologies can be improved.
Out of this came the WEF’s digital trust framework, showing “how cybersecurity, privacy, transparency, redressability, auditability, fairness, interoperability and safety can improve both citizen and consumer trust in technology and the companies that create and use new technologies.”
Beck said he believes that real progress on this issue requires strong leadership from government, the private sector and industry bodies: “As the peak body for the Internet of Things, I think the Internet of Things Alliance is a great forum for this discussion to advance.”
ENE.HUB is a sponsor of the 2023 IoT Impact conference, which will take place at the Sydney International Convention Centre on May 23. See the agenda and purchase tickets to IoT Impact 2023.
